


Dominion

by notmanos



Category: Supernatural
Genre: bad angel, no animals is always a bad sign, nobody likes cults
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-05-29 09:39:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15070391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notmanos/pseuds/notmanos
Summary: (Season 11) Sam and Dean go after a murderous cult that hunts former demon vessels as impure, but what they find is even stranger than they anticipated.  (This is a direct follow up to the story Carnivores.)





	1. Wolves At The Door

Dean really wished he could have called a demon in for help. But they were simply going to have to do this on their own.

There were positives: Stone Creek, Wyoming was a really small town. Maybe a couple hundred people at best, spread over more acreage than was necessary for such a tiny group. The terrain issues could both hurt and help them, depending on how things went, and how they chose to enter the town.

Although Dean sought input, Sam was leaving the strategy of attack up to him. The problem was, Dean felt like he was doing this blind. They had satellite images of the town - Google maps was proving a fairly useful tool - but nothing of what he really wanted, which was an idea of where Nathanael would be.

As far as Dean was concerned, the cult members, while dangerous, were simply an obstacle to get past. Killing Nathanael was the goal. If he wasn’t around to mark the “impure”, their holy war was done. They could go be domestic terrorists or white supremacists, or whatever shitty people did when they had too much time on their hands. 

Nevaeh may have been a help, if he trusted her, and if he thought getting a traumatized teenage girl involved in this was a good idea. He didn’t. 

  
She was where Jenny told them she would be, and for the first day or so, she was a complete fucking mess. And why wouldn’t she be? She was taught pure people couldn’t be possessed by demons, which was a complete fucking lie, but none of the cult chose to believe that. But Jenny had left her a video on her phone, while still wearing Nevaeh’s body, and told her the truth - purity had nothing to do with it. Humans had no natural defenses against demons. Also, not all demons were monstrously evil, just like not all angels were holy, and Jenny was a case in point, since she was an angel stripped of grace, and turned into a demon. Oh, and Lucifer wasn’t a demon, he was an archangel. Nathanael was lying to all of them, and using them for his own twisted ends. They had been killing innocent people for nothing.

When they showed up, she was terrified of them, because she recognized Dean as the former holder of the Mark of Cain, and Sam as a drinker of demon blood, which was unfair. He hadn’t done that in ages.

Sam didn’t want to leave her in such a state, as she was sobbing and had locked herself in her motel bathroom, and there was a possibility of a suicide attempt. So they stayed and talked to her through the door, until it felt like they were making some progress. Dean also ordered a couple of pizzas, because it had been hours and he was starving, and he was willing to bet, miserable as Nevaeh was, she was hungry too.

Sam gave him the  _ will you fucking stop it Dean _ look, but as soon as he opened one of the boxes and started chewing on a slice, she asked, “Is that pizza?” 

See? He knew a little something about kids. Okay, she was nineteen, but still a kid as far as he was concerned. 

She finally came out of the bathroom, and they all had pizza, and she started to see them as slightly less evil than she was taught. It was then she showed them the phone video Jenny had made for her, while still in her body. Again, Jenny was surprisingly nice for a demon, but her former angel status was probably unrelated to that.

Another check in Jenny’s nice column? Nevaeh didn’t remember anything about being possessed. She was fighting Sam in the parking lot, and then she woke up here. The rest was a huge, day long blank. Jenny didn’t let her see all the killing she was doing in her body, which was for the best, especially when you considered it was cult friends she was killing. They didn’t tell her about that.

In the end, she came back to their motel with them. She didn’t know what to think, and she was scared and suddenly alone in a new place. The embodiments of evil she’d been sent to hunt were, ironically, the closest thing she had to friends right now. Dean felt for her, because both he and Sam had been in that exact position before. Sam gave her his motel room, since he and Dean were used to sharing a room anyway. 

That night, after they showed her their anti-possession tattoos, they took her out to get her own. She’d been watching the phone video obsessively, and her eyes were red and swollen from the amount of crying she’d been doing, but once she got the tattoo, she seemed better. “This will really keep them out?” she asked, looking at the fresh tattoo on her arm before it was covered with a bandage. “It looks demonic.”

“It kind of is,” Sam admitted. “That’s why it works.”

In the car, on the way back to the motel, Dean asked, “What’s with the Goth look? I mean, I dig it, but it seems weird. You really into Bauhaus or something?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a puzzled Sam mouth  _ “Bauhaus?” _ Okay, so he didn’t know of any modern Goth bands. Sue him.

Nevaeh looked at her own chipped black nail polish, as if she’d never seen it before. “It was camouflage, kind of. You know, get accepted by the sinners by looking like a sinner.”

Dean was kind of amused by that. On the one hand, that wasn’t a bad strategy. But it had a fatal flaw in it. “From my experience, Goths aren’t sinners. They’re just lonely and depressed, like the rest of us.”

He was aware Sam was giving him an intense stare from the passenger seat, but Dean kept his eyes locked ahead on the road. He had never told Sam the story of this brief but involved friendship he formed with a Goth kid he encountered in New York City this one time, and he wasn’t about to start now. Dean had to have some secrets.

They let Nevaeh know from the beginning she was free to leave at any time, without warning. She wasn’t a captive. Dean expected her to be gone the next morning, which was why it was such a surprise she was still there. 

Even more surprising was when she came to their room, with a fresh coat of blue lipstick and a thick layer of black eyeliner. “Are you going after Nathanael?” she asked.

He exchanged a look with Sam, one of their  _ what do you want to do with this _ looks. As far as Dean was concerned, that meant Sam was leaving it up to him. “Yes,” Dean said. It didn’t matter if she knew the truth.

She blinked rapidly, as if she was expecting him to lie to her. “But he’s an angel.”

Dean nodded. “And we’ve killed them before. Ain’t easy, but it’s doable.”

When she glanced at Sam for confirmation, he nodded as well. 

She bit her thumbnail nervously, but when she caught herself doing that, she stopped. “Are you going to kill everybody?”

“No. We’re gonna do our damnedest not to kill the people, but we will hurt them if they get in our way. Nathanael is the target.”

“I want to come,” she said, in a rushed breath, like it was all one word.  _ Iwanttocome. _

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea-” Sam began.

“I have a sister!” she blurted, almost shouting. She slapped a hand over her mouth in mortification, and after a moment, tried in a lower, more measured tone. “She’s twelve. She needs to get out of there, regardless of what happens. She shouldn’t be there.”

Dean nodded. “We’ll help you get her out. Then you have to get out of the fight.”

She nodded in agreement, her entire posture sagging in relief, and Sam grabbed his arm. “A word?”

Dean guessed this was coming, and followed him outside into the parking lot. Sam walked a couple doors down, until he was reasonably certain Nevaeh wouldn’t hear them, and then turned to him. “Really? You know she could be lying, right?”

“Yeah. I also know it’s irrelevant. The cult already knows they failed, and we are probably coming for them. Nevaeh warning them we’re there will be irrelevant too.”

Sam was giving him the  _ you motherfucker _ look, which was in the top five of the looks they shot each other. Okay, they were brothers, so ... yeah, it was the number one look they gave each other. “This is not a good idea, Dean. Even if she’s telling the truth.”

“And if she’s telling the truth, we’d probably have to duct tape her and lock her in the trunk to keep her away. This is the least damaging option.” Sam’s jaw clenched, and Dean knew what was coming, so he offered a compromise immediately. “We don’t tell her about Cas. We keep the angel thing off limits. I mean, Nathanael is going to know about Cas, but wanna bet he didn’t mention it to his people?”

Sam’s grim look dissolved as he considered that. “You’re right. He probably didn’t. But they’ll still be prepared for him.”

“Oh yeah. We have to assume they know us, and they’re laying traps.”

Sam pointed back at his room. “And she could be one.”

He nodded. “She could be. So we keep her in the dark about Cas, and any help she could give them is next to useless. We good here?”

Sam had to think about it, but finally he nodded. “Don’t let your guard down.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to? I don’t even put my guard down around you.” Okay, that was an exaggeration. Kind of. 

When they returned to the room, Nevaeh was sitting in a chair, legs bent, so she could wrap her arms around her knees. Even with the heavy make up and all black Goth extravaganza wear, she looked fourteen, tops. It could very well be an act, but Dean still felt bad for her. She was a pawn in all of this, and her parents deserved to get their asses kicked. They want to waste their life in a cult? Fine. But dragging kids into it? He wanted to shake them upside down until some sense fell into their empty skulls. 

She sat up straight, putting her feet on the floor, hands resting on her knees. Dean noticed she’d chewed on her nails while they were gone. “I was gonna say, about my parents ..?”

“We’ll try not to hurt them,” Sam told her. “But we can’t make any promises.”

“No, hurt them,” she replied. “They’re bastards.” She bit some skin on the back of her finger until she visibly stopped herself. “They told me not to come home unless I killed some of the impure.”

Dean got that cold feeling he sometimes got before he killed something. He liked to think of it as hunter’s clarity. Those motherfuckers. Sam gave him one of those looks again, communicating  _ it could be an act _ , but if it was, she was a hell of an actress. She seemed like a fragile bundle of anxiety and fear, with an added layer of trying to seem tough, so no one knew how close she was was genuinely breaking down. Dean could sympathize, because he’d been there so many times he’d lost count. Not that he’d ever admit that.

They all split up, ostensibly to pack, but Sam called Cas and let him know about the new “friend” they were bringing along, and how he was supposed to keep his angel-ness to himself, while Dean loaded up the car. 

When Nevaeh came to the car, her long black hair had been awkwardly chopped to about chin length. It was not even remotely even, suggesting she’d never cut her own hair before, but it was kind of punk rock, so she could probably get away with it. “If you want me to even it out a little, I could,” he offered.

She was putting on her excessively zippered jacket, and frowned at him in a way that Claire had before. Apparently he brought out this emotion in teenage girls a lot. “Are you somebody’s dad?”

He almost said “Just Sam’s”, but Sam picked that moment to come out of the room, and he didn’t make the joke. “No. But I’ve been called worse.”

He got the teen girl eye roll - goddamn, he ought to keep a record of how many of those he got - and got in the Impala. Sam took him aside, and let him know in a whisper that Cas would be meeting them in Wyoming. He was going to try and reconnoiter the town, but never get close enough to let Nathanael know he was there. 

Dean felt his stomach clench at that. Yes, Cas was a holy ass kicker, but things had been so hard on him lately, he really didn’t know if he’d recovered enough for this. He didn’t want Cas to get more hurt than he already was. But he also knew he couldn’t “hover”, which Sam accused him of doing enough that it annoyed the shit out of him, and they did need him if they were going to take on a crazy angel. He had to trust Cas was ready for this. Dean simply wanted to keep him safe, and what was wrong about that? He wanted to keep everyone safe if he could. It was eternally disappointing to know he’d never be good enough to do it.

The first twenty miles of the drive passed in silence, and Dean figured he’d given Nevaeh enough time to get comfortable. “Tell me about your sister,” he prompted. “What’s her name?” He trusted his instincts enough that he would know if she was lying. 

“Her name is Esther,” she said, making a disgusted face Dean caught in the rearview. 

“Wow. That is ... old fashioned.” She wasn’t making that up. She’d have come up with a much better name if she had. 

“I know. And I thought my name was bad. She’s a little know it all pain in my ass.”

“Hoo boy, do I know that feeling,” he replied, and Sam gave him a scowl from the passenger seat. What? It was true!

“But she doesn’t deserve to ... go through what I did,” she said, glancing out the window, and pulling her feet up on the seat so she could put her arms around them. 

Dean knew that feeling too, but somehow he got a sense whatever she went through was very different than what he went through.

Sam picked that up, because he gave her a concerned glance. “Did something happen to you?”

She shook her head, still staring resolutely out the window like there was something more interesting than miles of empty road, her lips pressing into a thin line as unshed tears glistened in her eyes. 

Dean and Sam shared a look. This one said  _ if we find these motherfuckers, we’re killing them _ , which was another one of their top ten looks. Sexual abuse was not unheard of in religion or in weird ass cults. Where there was a demand of trust, there was a concurrent atmosphere ripe for violation of it. In the best cases, that didn’t happen. In the worst ... he didn’t need to finish that thought. 

They were silent for another sixty miles, until they made a pit stop at a gas station. While Nevaeh was in the store getting a drink, he and Sam discussed a plan Sam had for keeping some of the cult at bay. “So what does it cost?” Dean asked.

Sam’s reluctance to tell him told Dean it was bad. “Nothing. It-“

“Bullshit. Since when does magic cost nothing?”

“Mostly it costs my blood, but not a lot of it.”

“Great. Blood magic. How much has Rowena rubbed off on you?”

That earned his a scowl. “Dean, I have read up on this. I have all the ingredients I need, and it will be a lot less damaging than shooting at a bunch of people.”

Dean considered several arguments, and almost instantly discarded them. Sam was right, of course, but he also knew Sam was downplaying the true cost of it. With the right words and ingredients, it wasn’t hard to throw a spell. But unless you were an actual witch, the more complex the spell, the more it cost you. Physically, spiritually, metaphysically, or all of the above. “Let me do it,” he said.

Sam was shaking his head before he even finished the sentence. “You’re the sharpshooter. You won’t seriously hurt people unless you want to. This is where I’m best. Let me do it.”

And again, Sam was right. Dean really hated being left without an argument. “Is this a Harry Potter fantasy or something?”

“Fuck you,” Sam replied, with absolutely no anger behind it. 

Nevaeh returned to the car with snacks, which was great, and proved she at least knew how to be a good passenger. She seemed to be in better spirits too, although maybe that was the caffeine. Whatever worked.

At the hundred mile mark, she and Sam got to debating about musicians Dean had never heard of, so he stayed out of it, but he was curious how Sam knew so many people a teenage girl might listen to. Except, he kind of already knew, didn’t he? Hair as luxurious as his came with a price, and apparently that price was pop song knowledge. 

They crossed the Wyoming state line with sunset on the horizon, and while it made for pretty orange skies, it also reminded Dean of the thing he most hated about Wyoming. It seemed so fucking empty, like the state equivalent of a ghost town.

It wasn’t, not really, and its major cities were as crowded and homogeneous as anyone else’s, but there seemed to be more miles of nothing between outposts of civilization. Dad had a friend with a hunter’s cabin out here that he and Sam had stayed at a couple of times when they were growing up, and Dean always hated it. The silence, the emptiness, the loneliness, and the cold. Jesus, winters were beyond brutal out here. And the nights felt like they could go on forever, especially when you were stuck in a drafty old cabin with a ten year old, and had no idea if Dad was coming back any time soon. Or ever.

Dean shoved the memories away as he felt a vibration in his pocket, and pulled out his phone. Cas has texted him a location. Which gave Dean the slightest bit of relief. He was okay; Nathanael hadn’t caught him. 

It didn’t take long to reach him, because Wyoming was pretty generous with its speed limits in some areas, and Dean really enjoyed opening up the throttle when he could. He kept the Impala tuned up and ready for opportunities just like this. 

Cas met them at what must have been one of the smallest parks Dean had ever seen. It was basically a patch of grass, a few spindly trees, and some grass, all of which was made weirder by the fact that there were miles of empty land all around them. Why wasn’t that part of the park? Or was it? How did you tell?

Dean managed to suppress the urge to hug Cas, but he had wanted to. It was good to see him, and Dean felt a little bit lighter, although he wasn’t sure why. Recovering in the bunker must have done him some good, because it looked like all his physical injuries had healed, even though Dean thought he saw some unaccustomed weariness in his remarkably blue eyes. 

He had gone out to meet him alone first, because he was sure they’d have to talk about Nathanael and the town, and they didn’t want Nevaeh hearing about it. “Did you get an idea of the town layout,” Dean asked. “Any idea where Nathanael is?”

Cas gave him a small frown, one Dean knew well. He had bad news. “I couldn’t get near the town. It’s warded.”

He hadn’t expected that. “What? Wouldn’t that effect him?”

“As far as I could tell, the angel warding is encircling the town. I assume he was inside once it was done. He must feel it, but it’s more like a barrier keeping him in, while keeping angels on the periphery out.”

That was bizarre. And it led to a conclusion that hadn’t crossed Dean’s mind. “Is Nathanael doing this, or is he a captive?”

Could a bunch of people somehow kidnap an angel and build a religion around him? The very notion was absurd, but so was Dean’s life, so that meant nothing.

Holy shit. What had they walked into here?


	2. The Mother We Share

It was funny how well Sam knew Dean’s body language. He knew something had gone wrong by the slightest slump of his shoulders. Great. 

“So some hunters wear trench coats?” Nevaeh asked.

“He has a certain look he likes to go for,” Sam said, hoping she’d accept that and let it go.

”Depressed ‘60’s accountant?” she replied.

Sam could only shrug. That was kind of close.

Figuring they’d had enough time, Sam got out of the car, and Nevaeh instantly followed, even though he asked her to stay. He was afraid that was going to happen.

As they came up, Dean stepped back to face them, and Sam could see the concern on his face. What had happened now?

“Uh, Cas, this is Nevaeh. Nevaeh, Cas.” Sam said, getting introductions out of the way.

They both eyed each other warily, and Sam always found Cas’s scrutinizing looks kind of funny, because there was a definite air of ‘maybe I’ll swat you like a bug’ in them. And he could, so it wasn’t an idle threat. “Heaven backwards?” Cas finally said. “Why would someone do that?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. My parents are dumb.”

Before Cas could comment on that, Sam quickly asked, “What’s wrong?”

Dean gave him a look Sam liked to think of as his _would someone please shoot me_ expression. Lately, he’d been seeing it a lot. “The town is completely warded. Nathanael is unable to leave, even if he wanted to.”

“What?” Sam hadn't really anticipated anything, but that still threw him for a loop. 

“We don’t know if he’s trapped inside, or if it was a deliberate action on his part,” Cas said, keeping his wording as vague as possible.

Dean looked at Nevaeh. ”How did Nathanael seem? How is he kept?”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “What? I’ve never met Nathanael. Only certain people get to see the angel.”

That made Cas cock his head to the side, while Dean asked, “Who? Why?”

“Leaders, men.”

“Women aren’t allowed to see the angel?” Sam asked. He thought they were weirdly regressive before. This was another step backwards. Not surprising, really. Religion was often used as a cudgel to oppress the oppressed even more, when ideally it should have been doing the opposite. 

She shook her head. “It’s not our place.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Cas snapped. “What does gender matter to anything?”

“It doesn’t, except when insecure men are being pricks,” Dean said. Despite some seemingly regressive attitudes towards dating, Dean was at least refreshingly honest about other things. “Do you know where the angel is in Stone Creek?”

“In the old church,” she said.

Dean pulled a map out of his pocket, and spread it out on the picnic table behind him. It was a standard road map, but the tiny dot that was Stone Creek had been circled. “Can you give me a general location?”

She looked at the map, squinting. Stone Creek was a speck in the middle of a whole lot of nothing. “Uh, this really doesn’t tell me anything.”

“I know, but there are no maps that show Stone Creek in any detail.”

She scoffed. “No shit. It’s an assload of nothing out there.” She put her finger on the tiny dot of a town. “If this actually showed the town, it would be right in the middle.”

Dean frowned. “Right in the middle? As in, exposed from all angles, and clearly visible to everyone?”

She shrugged. “I guess.”

Dean folded the map back up again, and cursed under his breath so softly, Sam almost didn’t hear it.

“I assume it’s guarded,” Sam said. Usually that was a fairly safe assumption.

“There are people around usually, yeah. Lots of people want to see an angel.”

“How many people are we talking about? What kind of weapons are they carrying?” Dean asked. 

She shrugged again. “Guns, knives. The number kind of varies, but there’s always at least three or four.”

“Is there a time when there are fewer people about?”

She shrugged again. “I dunno. Maybe around dawn? I’ve never paid that much attention. I mean, I tried to sneak in to see it when I was twelve, but I got caught, and in a lot of trouble.”

Sam and Dean shared a look again. That was such a loaded thing to say, and the fact that she looked down at the ground and avoided their eyes made it worse. She could be lying, sure, but more likely, she had more abuse heaped on her, and yet she was the one embarrassed by it. Sam didn’t want to advocate killing everyone, he really didn’t, but if Dean suggested burning the entire town to ashes, he wouldn’t object. What was the point of saving humanity from the Darkness if humanity acted like this?

“Okay, we hit it near dawn,” Dean said. “Sam and I will stick to the plan as before, but Cas, you’ll come in ... when you can.”

They’d have to go ahead and wipe out at least one angel ward to get Cas into play, which shouldn’t be difficult ... in theory. In reality, they had no idea where they were, and would basically have to get lucky if they hid them well. And the idea that they’d be free and clear to do this, and not be harassed by, say, gunfire or angry cultists, was super unlikely. All in all, this plan was terrible, and had holes you could drive the Impala through, and yet it was the absolute best they could do. Sam would have liked to have claimed this was the first time that had ever happened, but no, far from it. This was usually how their plans went. The fact that they generally worked was astonishing, but they knew they had to win the battle, or they were dead. Survival or death being your only two options did give you a great deal of impetus to see it through.

Nevaeh looked between the three of them, confused. “What plan? I don’t remember any plan.”

Dean sighed, and told her the truth. “We’re leaving you out of it.” 

Sam had to admit, this approach kind of surprised him, but Dean had been different since he was freed of the Mark of Cain. He was more like his old self, sure, but there was also a residual openness - well, at least as far as Dean could go - that was welcome. It was like he was tired of putting on his Dean act half the time. It bothered Sam a little, because he did get a sense of ... if not depression exactly, a feeling of being lost from him. The Darkness had shaken him fundamentally, and he was still trying to figure out a way to deal with it. Sam had hoped he’d open up to him, maybe ask for help, but that still wasn’t Dean’s way. 

Nevaeh didn’t look impressed. “But you said I could go in and get my sister -“

“You can and you will,” Dean told her. “But you’re not fighting. You’re benched.”

“What? That’s crazy. I know the town, I know these people -“

“And how will they react if they know you flipped?”

She became very still, her expression stony as she tried to hide the shock. She hadn’t thought of that. If they treated her so poorly when they thought she was one of them, Sam honestly didn’t want to know what they’d do if they thought she’d betrayed them. 

Dean grimaced in sympathy. “When we’re in, I’ll send you a text. You’ll be clear to come in and get Esther, and then you need to leave immediately. Fighting probably won’t be over, but you may be the only sane family Esther has. You’re all she’s got. I want to keep you both alive and get you out of there, but you’re going to have to help me do that, okay?”

She swallowed hard and nodded, and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand to wipe away threatening tears. Sam glanced at Dean, and wondered how many times he told himself some variation of that when they were growing up. He could ask, but he already knew Dean would never tell him.

“How many people are we looking at?” Sam asked. They needed to know, but right now it was also helpful to break the tension. Sam was vividly aware this girl tried to kill him two days ago, but that didn’t stop him from feeling bad for her. 

“Um, I don’t know the exact number, because there were a couple of teams sent out,” she said. “Maybe fifty at most?”

That was more or less what Sam expected, but it was still too damn much for the three of them. 

“Teams?” Dean repeated, concerned. “To hunt down the impure?” She nodded, and his expression turned grim. “How many people have been marked?”

“Maybe a couple dozen? It varies.”

“Former demon vessels?” Cas said. He actually seemed angry, which was a good break from his depressed, wounded state. But if he really got angry, they probably wouldn’t be able to contain him. A perfect example of the good news/bad news scenario. “These people weren’t given a choice. They’re victims. Who would think murdering them is a good idea? Or even remotely holy?”

“Well, there’s a lot of death in the Bible -“

“And the Bible’s been rendered contradictory and incomprehensible due to human interpretation and prejudice,” Cas snapped. Nevaeh seemed taken aback, but whether it was from his words, or from sad ’60’s accountant becoming clearly dangerous was uncertain. 

Dean grabbed Cas by the arms and faced him. “Calm down. We’re on the same team here, and she’s a kid from a cult. Okay?”

Cas met Dean’s gaze, and visibly relaxed. “Yes. Sorry.” It was kind of sweet how they were each other’s emotional anchors, but Sam knew better than to ever say that.

Nevaeh leaned over, and whispered, “Is he a Biblical scholar or something?”

“Yes,” Sam said. It wasn’t a lie.  _ Or something _ was a wide net.

Having settled Cas, Dean turned back to her. “Is there a way into town that’s not well covered? Like, say, you wanted to sneak out to drink on a Saturday night or something.”

“I never ...” she replied, but it was obvious she was lying. Even she gave up with a roll of her eyes.”There’s this place outside town. It’s not a forest, there’s not enough trees for that, but it’s a ... um ...”

“Copse?” Dean suggested.

“Maybe? There’s enough trees where you could get lost for a bit if you need to. Nothing ever comes from there, except animals.”

“Good enough,” Dean said.

Whether it was or wasn’t didn’t matter. They had a half-assed plan, too few details, and far too few people to carry it out. You know, typical Winchester plan.

Sam was trying to remain optimistic, but man, this was going to suck.

**

Normally it was terrible to get up at the ass crack of dawn and head out to meet your doom, but Dean felt really up for it today.

Maybe because he didn’t sleep well. His mind kept running scenarios, what to do if this happened, or this, and he found fun new things to be anxious about each time. He wished he could do some genuine reconnaissance, but that was out of the question. He wasn’t an angel; he couldn’t observe without being observed. Scratch that. He could try, but he would fail. This was a cult that may or may not have been holding an angel hostage. Dean was willing to bet they didn’t take well to outsiders. Nothing ruins your murder party like uninvited guests. He had to assume both traps and hyper-vigilance. 

Dean could have attempted to grill Nevaeh for more details, but he already knew that was pointless. As soon as he found out these guys were male chauvinist dickholes - which, honestly, he should have guessed, although Sue was a damn good fighter in spite of it - he knew they’d probably kept a shit ton of stuff from her, because she was the wrong gender. What she did know she picked up on her own, because she wasn’t a moron and she wanted to survive in their fucked up world.

Rather than trying to sleep and annoying the shit out of himself, he kept busy. He went through the weapons in the trunk, deciding what would be best to use, what would be too cumbersome or not worth the weight or effort to take. It allowed him to come up with a couple of contingency plans, and made him feel better. 

Cas was up, because Cas didn’t sleep, and they ended up shooting the shit for a couple hours. Cas had not only read the entire library in the bunker, but he’d finally figured out Netflix, and watched most of that. Cas had many questions, and Dean did his best to answer them, but even he couldn’t explain why there were so many procedural shows, or why good British shows had so few episodes. Dean also tried to extol the virtues of kaiju films, but Cas seemed dubious. 

They also talked about more consequential things, including Dean’s dislike of Sam intending to use blood magic. Again, he couldn’t fault Sam’s logic. Considering how outnumbered they were, this would even odds considerably. But it was more dangerous than he was saying, and since negative spells could have a rebound effect, he still wasn’t comfortable with it. Cas understood that, and had some obvious reservations about magic - look what happened when Rowena turned it on him - but he also understood why Sam was doing it, and it was comforting to have a measured outside perspective on it. Or maybe it was simply having Cas around that he found comforting. The whole team back together! No one was dead, or under some kind of influence, be it demonic, magical, or angelic, and the world wasn’t currently ending. It probably wouldn’t last, since it never did, and he still had no idea what they were going to do about the Darkness. But for now it was nice. 

Maybe Sam was having some of the same issues, because Dean figured they’d leave by four thirty, but he was up and ready to go by four, although he looked reasonably well rested. There was no point in waiting. They got Nevaeh up - she didn’t look particularly well rested either - and they headed out ahead of schedule. 

Dean found a poorly used trail on which to hide the car, and Cas and Nevaeh stayed with it as he and Sam headed off. The sun was just coming up on the horizon, and it was surprisingly chilly, but that’s why wearing so many layers helped. Both he and Sam had backpacks and guns, but their packs were filled with different things. Dean’s was mostly weapons, and Sam’s was mostly stuff he’d needed for the spell. They followed the actual creek the town was named after into a sparsely wooded area. It was spread out, but unlike forests he and Sam had been in, this one was open, with more land than trees to cover it. It was no one’s idea of lush or pretty, even with the sky shading from deep blue to lavender as the currently unseen sun was rising. It was a vivid illustration of the vastness of nothing out here that always drove him crazy. 

He and Sam had this down to an art by now. They didn’t talk, and even Dean was impressed by how little noise they made moving through the trees. They weren’t strangers to war. They managed to startle a few animals, which was always impressive.

The concentration of trees began to get denser, and Dean caught a faint whiff of wood smoke, letting them know they were getting closer to the town. Dean also spotted a well concealed but still visible trip line, that he pointed out to Sam, and with hand gestures alone, told him to keep his eyes open. Dean honestly had no idea if all the gestures Dad taught them were military issue, or some he learned in the service and others he made up, but it was still good to know. 

As it was, they found a couple more traps, none very sophisticated, and an animal trap, which Dean destroyed simply because it was a cruel one. There were better traps, and they had to know it. 

Eventually they saw a thin line of smoke, and glimpsed wooden walls through the far trees. If there were any guards, they weren’t obvious. 

Sam found a tangle of blackberry bushes to hide behind and get his spell set up, while Dean watched the town, quickly and quietly assembling his sniper rifle. He’d have to bust it back down and swap it for something smaller when they headed in, but for now, it was ideal. 

He got down on his belly, and got a better look at the town through the rifle’s high powered scope. Nevaeh had been right, the town looked dead this early in the morning. She was also right about something she said over dinner last night, which was the town was “laid out funny”. Apparently, according to Sam’s research, it had begun its life as a sort of hide out for a group of religious fundamentalists who wanted to escape the wicked ways of the modern world. (So, it was a town founded by asshats, that continued to house asshats. What a legacy.) That first group, quite literally died off in the ’50’s, as new members wouldn’t join, and everyone else got too old. As far as Sam could tell, these purity fuckholes moved in around the late ’90’s. Exactly when they met/kidnapped Nathanael was unclear, but it must have been only a few years ago. Nevaeh was no help there.

There looked to be a main “cluster” of old fashioned, very utilitarian looking public buildings out front, leading to a paved road that looked home brewed, as in, someone tried to mix up their own asphalt and did a half-assed job of it. It led to what must have been private homes, on lots farther apart, and at the very top of a gentle incline was a white clapboard church, with one armed guard out front, and angel wards painted in red and black on its outer walls. The visible guard had an M-16 slung across his chest, and what looked like a .45 mm Glock in a holster at his side. Was that a little excessive? Unless they were expecting someone to come for the angel. But even then, if it was Heaven, those guns would do fuck all to an angel. Was this part of the welcome party for them? Too bad Nevaeh wasn’t here to ask. But if they had a survivalist bent - and it was hard to believe they didn’t - those were probably just their walking around weapons. They probably had nastier stuff they busted out for company. Fighting humans was bad enough; fighting humans with an impressive stockpile of weaponry was a whole other kettle of shit. No good options there. 

He could hear Sam saying something, although it was so low he couldn’t hear the words. A faint scent of burned vervain and cooked blood told him the spell was on. 

The spell Sam was using was basically a mass sleep spell. Because a witch really needed to do it, it wasn’t known how many would actually effected by it. But even if they got a third of the town sleeping through the angel heist, that would be a major help. 

As Dean watched, the guard in front of the church collapsed, going down like a ton of bricks. They had confirmation the sleep spell worked, but not on how many. 

Dean sat up and quickly disassembled his rifle, shoving the pieces in his backpack. Dad would have been proud, because it took him less than a minute. He hefted the pack, took out one of his pistols, and started ahead on foot. It was a given that Sam would need a minute or two to recover from casting the spell - probably more, but he was a stubborn ass and would rush it - so Dean would breach the town alone. His first mission was to wipe out one of the angel wards keeping Cas out. No matter how many people Sam put to sleep, they were fucked if they couldn’t get Cas into the fight. But both he and Sam had angel blades, just in case. Even if everything went right, Cas might not be in position to get Nathanael when an opening showed itself. They had to be ready. 

Dean tensed as he crossed out of the tree line, waiting to get lit up like a bar on spring break, but it didn’t happen. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, and headed for the church. 

The best option was going around the back, since walking down the janky road would leave him too exposed, and when he took his first step into the town proper, he felt something akin to static electricity crackle over his skin. 

Dean had time to wonder what the hell that was before reality turned upside down. 


	3. All That Heaven Allows

And Sam thought cutting his own arm hurt.

When he said the final word of the spell, it was like he got punched in the side of the head, and that punch somehow went through his skin and tagged his soul as well. It was a sensation like being dipped in liquid nitrogen, but only on the inside. It was like his soul bit down on tin foil. He wanted to curl up and die. Holy fuck, how did witches do this? 

All of this came with a head rush that made his vision turn grainy, and he had to close his eyes and do his best to ride it out. While the spell working was great, if he passed out now, what was the point of coming here? 

Sam used meditation breathing to try and keep steady, in control, and it seemed to help. He had to be careful, because he could so easily fall asleep, and that too would be self-defeating. He was extremely tired, though. Sam was so focused inward, he almost missed the flash of light.

He opened his eyes, and looked around. What flashed? He saw nothing, beyond the same sparse trees that had been here the whole time. 

Sam stood, and looked for Dean. He’d probably moved on to the town, and as was usual, he left no obvious trace of himself. Had he shot someone?

Well, no. That would have made a sound along with the flash. Could the spell have done that? He honestly didn’t think so, but maybe. It wasn’t a noted side effect, but he was a novice at spell casting. Anything was possible. 

He pulled out one of his handguns and made for the tree line. Nothing was moving in the town, which he took as a good sign, until he paused and made himself stand there until he could figure out what was wrong. His hunter’s intuition was screaming at him, and he wasn’t sure why, until he went over that thought again: nothing was moving down there.

Where was Dean?

Which was ridiculous, because he would have gone around back. The street was too exposed. You were begging to get shot if you stayed out in the open. But Dean would pop up and give him the high sign that it was okay. All he had to do was wait for Dean to give him the sign.

So Sam waited. And waited. The sky was getting lighter, and the wind was getting warmer, and there wasn’t a single sign of Dean. Even if he was sneaking around like a cartoon bank robber, it wouldn’t have taken this long for him to get to the church. But, if he’d been captured or something, you’d think there’d have been some noise. Monologuing at least, maybe a few random insults. 

Okay, that flash of light, whatever it was, was bad news. He couldn’t go through the town this way. Time for plan B. 

In the car, he and Dean had discussed alternate scenarios, if they couldn’t make a clean entrance on this side of town. The woods thinned out to the northeast, but if Sam didn’t mind some added distance - and at this point, he didn’t - he could walk around and attempt to enter the town from somewhere a bit east of the church. He would probably be very close to a house, but it couldn’t be helped. But as he walked on, he kept his eyes open, in case he saw any sign of Dean.

But what could that have been? Sam went over in his mind the things that could grab someone and make them disappear. A powerful demon, an angel, Death, a spell. Death was out, because he was dead. (Still not sure how that worked, but okay. What was that phrase in The Call of Cthulhu? _ And with strange aeons, even death may die _ .) An angel would be unable to get past the warding, although, if Dean had stepped inside the circle of warding, could Nathanael have been able to grab him? Probably not. Cas seemed to indicate there were concentric circles of it. That left a demon and a witch, but why would either come here? He could see a demon maybe wanting revenge, but where did a witch come into this? There was the added problem that if it was a witch, he’d just cast a spell. They’d know. There was no way in hell he put them to sleep either. Shit.

Okay, prioritize. Demon first, witch second. At least he had Ruby’s knife this time. He and Dean often swapped it, for no rhyme or reason. Scratch that - the reason was Dean would always keep it if he didn’t sneak it out of his jacket sometimes. Sam kept an eye out for demon signs as well as keeping an eye out for Dean. 

Where the hell was he?

**

Dean was so accustomed to waking up in strange places, it took him a moment to figure out why this was especially weird. 

First of all, he was face down on a desk, which he was pretty sure he hadn’t been since ... what, seventh grade maybe? Long time. Also, he got a strong sense he was supposed to be somewhere else.

He sat up, and so much weird jumped out at him it was kind of hard to process. He was at a desk in an office building. Turning to look behind him, he saw a window wall looking out at a mirrored high rise across the way. Okay, sure, why not? Also, he was chained to the desk. His wrists were manacled together, and they were connected by a surprisingly heavy chain to a rusted bolt in the center of a desk, where a computer might be. He saw a figure in business casual, and he opened his mouth to ask several questions, only to see that the person had no face.

No mouth, no nose, no eyes, no ears. No hair in fact. Just a blank sphere growing out from the neck. “What the fuck?” he exclaimed, unable to keep it in.

There were several of these no face people, walking around, tapping away at keyboards, filing what looked to be blank pieces of paper. Was this ... was this what a psychotic break looked like? Felt like? Thing was, Dean was fairly certain he’d suffered one in Hell, and while it had been deliberately buried under a deluge of other terrible memories, he was also reasonably sure they didn’t happen like this. 

“Can you hear me? See me?” Dean wondered, and had to tamp down the urge to start singing Tommy from The Who as hysterical laughter bubbled in the back of his throat. There was no response from any of the things, which walked around without running into anything, but seemed to be following a pattern, repeated over and over. There’s no way they could have been alive. What were they? 

Dean looked around for something to pick the lock, if that was even possible, but his desk was empty on top, and had no drawers. He was starting to wonder if he could break the chair he was in, find something in that, when a voice said, “You are a curious thing. What are you exactly?”

He looked around, thinking that one of the headless things had said something to him, but he saw no one even remotely close to him. “Nope,” Dean snapped. “I’m not talking to you unless you show yourself.”

“You think you have control here?” The voice suddenly let out a high pitched, hysterical laugh that sounded insane - it was literally  _ hee hee hee hee  _ \- and then the chains were yanked down so violently his head crashed into the desk. He saw stars explode in front of his eyes, as that laugh continued. “I can make your face disappear. Do you like your face?”

Oh shit. “Nathanael. Is this you?”

That creepy laugh continued, but Dean felt slack on the chain, and was able to sit back up. His head hurt, and he felt blood crawling down his face, but there wasn’t really anything he could do about it for the moment. A shadow fell over him, and he looked up at the craziest shit yet.

Dean wanted to scream, he really did, but he held it in check. Nathanael looked like a very slender man in a white toga from the neck down. From the neck up, he had seven animal heads merged into one big ball of head. There was no other way to describe it really. He could feel his sanity fracturing simply looking at this monstrosity. There was a lion’s head, a horse’s head, a goat’s head, a dog’s head, a raven’s head, a panda’s head, and an alligator’s head. They were somehow fused together in a big circle, and they all seemed to be reacting independently, although they couldn’t actually move anything save for their eyes and mouths. “You stink of the pit,” the lion’s head said. It was a human voice. He almost expected a cartoon lion one. “Evil has infested you, left dark claw marks on your soul. You know that, right? You gotta know that. But you also stink of Heaven. Why is that?”

Again, the urge to laugh was upon him, but he also knew he wouldn’t stop until he knocked himself out, or Nathanael made him one of the faceless people. Dean had to look away, at the file cabinet across the room, to actually talk to him. “We came here to rescue you.”

“And ..?”

“Kill you if necessary.” There was no point in lying. He was an angel, and didn’t have Cas’s tact about not pointing out when Dean was lying.

“Ooh! Who’s this?” Nathanael crouched down into his line of sight, and suddenly he was Cas, in his black suit, blue tie, and tan trench coat. But he also wasn’t Cas. Not only was the body language all wrong, but his sky blue eyes were spinning rainbow circles in their sockets. It was somehow ridiculous and terrifying at the same time. Exactly like Nathanael. “Come on, tell me, who’s this guy? You just thought about him.”

No lying to an angel. “Castiel.”

Nathanael slapped a hand to his chest, like he was having a heart attack. “Cassie? Old stick up his ass Cass-Cass is here?” He threw back his head and did that creepy laugh again. “Ooh, the stories I could tell you about your little soul mate. You know, one of the last times I saw him, he said ...” Nathanael straightened Cas’s tie, and put on a mock stern voice so deep and sharp it made the floor shake. ”There’s something wrong with you, Nathanael. You can’t get purer than Heaven.” He slapped the desk, and put a crack in the top. Sadly, it came nowhere near the bolt. “Fuck yeah I can! I can make this world so fucking pure Heaven wouldn’t be able to lick its taint.”

Yeah, it was getting hard not to become completely hysterical. Nathanael was crazy. And not crazy like Cas when he went nutso after the whole Leviathan thing. This was such a genuinely terrifying level of crazy that Dean didn’t want to even be in this state anymore. Oh, fuck the state! Continent, hemisphere. He wanted to be in Argentina as of yesterday. This was madness as pure rage. “You’re killing people.”

“No shit, Sherlock! People are impure. You’re all fucking disgusting animals not fit to suck my toes. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I, champ? Your soul is a dirty kaleidoscope of sins and degradations and angelic purity. I could stare at it all day. You make no sense, human. Not a lick.”

Dean did wonder if he meant dirty as in grimy, or dirty as in X rated, or both, but you know what? Didn’t care, didn’t want to know. This guy was total coo-coo bananapants, and he had all the powers of an angel, which was a horror beyond comprehension. “How can you do any of this? The angel warding -“

“The angel warding what? Contains me? Hurts me? Yes, it does. It hurts a whole bunch.” He turned his head upside down and directly in Dean’s line of sight. His irises remained rainbow roulette wheels spinning forever, empty of everything but malevolence. He smiled in a way Cas never did, not even during his brief God phase. His lips stretched to reveal all his teeth, stretched until the corners of his mouth split and blood started dribbling down his face, and then his teeth started to move, sharpening and thinning and going for a little shuffle through his gums. It was bad enough to see it; it was somehow worse that it was happening in Cas’s face. “I like the pain, Greenie Deanie Meanie. Makes me feel alive. And the more I get accustomed to it, the more it can’t hold me back.”

That ... that wasn’t possible, was it? Angels couldn’t get used to the wards and blow right past them. Could they? Oh shit, he didn’t know. “If we knew you had a bondage kink, we wouldn’t have bothered you.”

Nathanael grabbed Dean’s chin, so hard he could feel his jawbone creak. But he wasn’t going to wince and give this sick fuck the satisfaction. “I could open you up and play with your guts. I could slice you open mouth to ass and wear you as a cardigan. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

“My safe word is go fuck yourself,” Dean snarled. He kept up the defiance, continued fortifying the ramparts of it, because he was shit your pants terrified and knew the instant he gave into it he was lost. Angels could do any goddamn thing they wanted to you, and without wards or an angel blade, or a friendly neighborhood angel, you were so fucked it zoomed past sad and crashed straight into tragically hilarious. 

Nathanael was still grinning at him, and blood was pouring out of his mouth like a fountain. It splattered on the desk, speckled Dean’s bound hands, and he could do nothing. He was trying. He was trying to push away from the desk using his feet, shove it into Nathanael, but it wasn’t moving a centimeter. It may as well have been welded to the floor. Nathanael’s fingers felt like they were sinking into his skin. Literally - like his fingers were touching the muscles and tendons in his face, working down through the fibers. Somehow it was more disgusting than painful, but considering the creaking of his jaw, he supposed he should be grateful for that. “Tell me, man child, why don’t you make any sense? Why are you half Hell and half Heaven?”

“Because I’m a royal fuck up.”

He threw his head back and cackled, and as a consequence let go of Dean’s face. It was a relief, although he wasn't sure if he had fractured his jaw or not. “You are! You totally are! It is so fun to find one of you so self-aware. Usually you fucking shaved apes have no idea how ridiculous you are. I wouldn’t have expected it of you. If I made you a little uglier, you could fit in this town just aces, but the self-awareness means you’d never fit. Shame.”

Dean knew he needed to stay in this, and get what information he could out of this nut roll, if any of it could be trusted. But a significant part of him wanted to go comatose, retreat into his own head until he went catatonic. Because this angel was going to destroy him. He knew this, just like he knew he wouldn’t be the first or the last. Dean forced himself onward, despite the terror, because if not him, who? That was pretty much his life’s motto. What other pathetic, unlucky, doomed son of a bitch could do it? “What’s the point of any of this?”

“Point?” Nathanael threw his arms wide, as if encompassing the whole world. “What is the point of any of you? I mean, no one needs billions of you. You get about twenty five humans in a room, you’ve seen them all.”

“Why this town? Why these people? Why the demon vessels?”

Nathanael leaned down until he was right in Dean’s face. Blood from his mouth now coated Dean's hands in a warm shower of red rain. “Why not? Hmm, Dean Bean? Answer me that. Why not?”

Okay, yeah, they were completely fucked. 


	4. Secondary Arrows

Castiel knew Dean wasn’t fond of the landscape, but he found it oddly beautiful. It had a kind of austere loveliness that was quite soothing. He wanted to tell Dean this morning that his dislike of it was probably a projection of his poor childhood memories associated with it, but decided then was not the time. Maybe when he wasn’t so anxious.

Or he could keep it to himself. Dean never really reacted well to those kind of comments. On some level he must have known, but was pretending he didn’t for ... reasons Castiel still couldn’t fathom. Humans enjoyed denial quite a bit, but it helped nothing. Of course, this was dangerous ground for him to tread. Wasn’t he indulging himself in denial?

Was he honestly up for a fight? He wasn’t sure. He knew Sam and Dean needed him, so he was here, and he was determined to see this through. But if he was honest with himself, he still felt weak and useless. He was even failing a simple babysitting job.

Castiel turned his focus outward, towards Nevaeh. She was sitting against the hood of the car, hands in her coat pocket, looking small and miserable. She hadn’t said a thing since Sam and Dean had left, and neither had he. He considered what he knew of her, and was surprised to realize she was probably afraid of him. Which was crazy, because she didn’t know he was an angel. But she was raised in a rigidly patriarchal religion, where she had no power. Of course she’d be afraid of men, strange or known. Men held all the cards, therefore they could do anything they wanted to her, and she’d have little to no recourse. How did anyone justify such a system to themselves? It baffled him. 

He wondered if there was any way he could put her at ease. What did humans usually do? The first thing that occurred to him was tell a joke, but he didn’t know any, and the last one Dean told him he didn’t understand, although Dean seemed to find it amusing. They also offered refreshments. That he could do. “Would you like some water?” he asked her. Even though he kept his tone level, she seemed to jolt in shock. “Or some alcohol? Dean usually has both in the trunk.”

“No, thank you,” After a moment, she glanced at him nervously. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been a hunter?”

An excellent question. How did he answer it? Did he subtract the time he was unable to do so, and add the time he worked with Sam and Dean but was not technically a hunter? He realized he was taking far too long to answer a simple question, and said, “A few years.” Looked at from several different angles, it was close enough to correct.

“Do things usually take this long?”

“Actually, they usually take longer. Neither of them liked the inability to get a lay of the land first, so you have to factor in time for unknown issues, and what’s know as the typical Winchester bad luck.”

“They have lots of bad luck?”

“They seem to think so. I believe the opposite is true, but they usually don’t ask my opinion on the subject.”

They lapsed into a more companionable silence, and Castiel thought maybe he wasn’t doing so badly when he was seized by a terrible anxiety. He was about to despair having an attack now, but when he could taste fear like burnt aluminum in the back of throat, he knew this wasn’t his reaction. His connection to Dean was as frayed as the rest of him, but Castiel was certain something terrible had happened/was happening to him. Enough of the connection existed for Castiel to sense it.

“What is it?” Nevaeh asked. Castiel had leaned against the car and swayed on his feet, which he only realized in retrospect. He’d been having issues that some journals he read said were “disassociation”, which was a bizarre concept for a being possessing a vessel, but there wasn’t any psychological journals written by the former demon or angel possessed. Technically, he was only associated with his vessel by possession, so could he ever disassociate from it while still possessing it? A true poser. 

“Something’s wrong. Are you armed?”

“No. They didn’t give me any.”

“Look in the glove compartment.”

While she did this, Castiel didn’t need to reach out with his senses to know the wards were still in place. They were. Even from this distance, they radiated an uncomfortable pressure. Nathanael must have been in agony. 

Nevaeh seemed surprised to find a handgun in the glove compartment, and by the way she checked it was loaded - which, of course it was, it was one of the emergency guns - he knew she’d handled them before. Which was good, because he couldn’t enter the town. 

She got of the Impala, holding the gun and looking puzzled. “Do I want to know how many weapons are in the car?”

“By asking the question you have answered it,” he told her, and took her arm.

Castiel knew this entire thing was risky, and could end up with Nevaeh in a very bad place. But there was no time to wait, and as Dean would have said, you sometimes had to roll the dice. 

He folded space and brought them to a wooded area on the outskirts of town. From here, the wards were like a solid thing, pressing against him like hundred mile per hour winds throwing shattered glass. It was uncomfortable, but Castiel could bear it as long as he had to.

He let go of Nevaeh, and she stumbled away from him, looking around in wonder. “What ..? How ..?”

“I’m not human,” he told her. “My name is Castiel. I’m an angel.”

Her eyes were as wide as they could probably go, and she stared at him with an expression he couldn’t quite interpret. It was a little disbelieving, a little angry, and a little terrified. “You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not. They asked me not to tell you for, well, obvious reasons. That’s how I knew this town has angel warding, because it’s keeping me out as well.”

Her breathing changed, tears filled her eyes, and she stumbled against a tree. She had dropped the gun. “Angels ... look human?”

“No, this is a vessel. A human would be unable to withstand my true form.”

She collapsed to her knees, tears streaming down her face, and brought a hand to her mouth. “They ... they’re working for Heaven? My parents sent me to kill them, and they’re divine?”

It took him a moment to parse what she was saying. “No. They’re not divine. But they are doing good. Mostly. There’s an argument-” Castiel scowled at the train of his own thoughts. No one had time for this. ”-Nevaeh, this has not damned you. You are blameless.”

“No I’m not,” she said, her face scrunching as if she was trying to will herself not to cry. “I tried to kill them. I would have ...”

Castiel stepped forward, and she cringed, bowing her head. “No, don’t do that.” He took her arm again, and helped her up. “Angels are simply soldiers of God. That’s all we are. Respect is fine, but don’t worship us.”

“You know God? Oh God ...” She clapped her hand to her mouth and looked mortified. 

“God really doesn’t care if you take his name in vain,” That was always a human made rule that Castiel found deeply puzzling. Why would he care? Why would _ anyone _ care? 

She was starting to calm down, which was good. The wards continued pressing at his back like an electrified force field. “That’s why you got so upset when I mentioned the Bible. I didn’t realize! I’m sorry.”

“I should apologize to you. I’ve been under a great deal of stress lately.” He frowned at his own terrible excuse, but again, now was not the time. “Nevaeh, I need you to do something for me. The wards are keeping me from going into town. I need you to break one.”

“What do they look like?”

Castiel glanced at the town. The wards seemed to glow as if they were radioactive, but he knew human senses were ridiculously limited. They didn’t see them like that. “Those symbols on the church? They all look like that.”

She looked confused. “But those are angelic protection symbols.”

“Is that what they told you? They lied. They’re the opposite.”

Nevaeh turned her gaze on the town, as if she’d never seen it before. “Why would they do that?”

Castiel had a couple theories, and none of them were good. What was the point of lying about an angel ward? It was in someone’s best interest not to have other angels in the town. “I don’t know. I intend to find out.”

She wiped tears away with the back of her hand, and retrieved the gun. “How do I break them?”

“Just smear a line. That will be enough.”

It would be. Castiel would take any opening right now to shove through. Something terrible was going on down there, and he didn’t know if Nathanael was a victim or the cause. Which was worse?

It didn’t matter. He could taste bile in the back of his throat, and he knew if he had a typical stomach, it would have turned itself inside out by now. Terror was thrumming through the connection, as tenuous as it was, and he wondered what it would be like at full power. Probably intolerable. 

What he did know was as soon as he found out who was hurting Dean, he was going to stab them in the head.

**

Sam found and avoided a couple of other trip wires in the surrounding woods, and looking around, noticed some odd things. For instance, a great abundance of poisonous plants, some not at all native to this area. Planted deliberately? By who, and for what reason? It brought the witch idea back to the fore, but no, he hadn’t been attacked yet, and any witch worth his or her salt would have felt his half-assed spell and confronted him about it by now. Sam felt confident he could cross them off the list. Demon or angel was all that was left in the who took Dean sweepstakes.

But there were so many little things not adding up, it was really bothering him. Nathanael must have been a hostage, because if he wanted to hunt down former demon vessels, he could do so much more quickly and efficiently than a group of humans ever could. But why teach them proto-Enochian, and teach it to them correctly? Incorrectly, and he could have had the humans accidentally writing a “help me” message printed clearly for any angel to read. Unless he didn’t want help.

This made no sense. If he wanted to “purify the world” he could do it himself. If he was a hostage, he was being more accommodating than you’d think an angel would be.

Cas had said something that Sam had been chewing over for a while. About the time of the war in Heaven, between Raphael and Cas, Nathanael had dropped off the radar, and neither Cas nor Raphael had found him. Maybe Nathanael didn’t want Heaven to know where he was. Maybe he was using humans because doing it himself might attract unwanted attention. 

Maybe the humans thought they had an angel hostage. And maybe they were wrong.

Sam wished this had occurred to him as a possibility sooner, because Nathanael could be crazy dangerous on his own, without people who thought they had righteousness on their side. Either that, or this cult of people was terrifying. Split the difference and come down in the middle - maybe the truth was there.

But he so didn’t like this. Not one bit.

Now he found something really strange. Sam wasn’t sure what made him look, but he thought he saw something weird in a tree, and discovered it was a mark carved high up, where a branch met the trunk. It looked Enochian, but he didn’t recognize it. He took a photo of it with his phone and texted it to Cas, although he didn’t know if he had his phone on. 

As Sam walked, he kept an eye out for traps, and for other Enochian or proto-Enochian sigils. Now, another thing occurred to him: it was quiet.

On the walk here, he and Dean had heard birds, startled some animals in the underbrush, heard the chits and chatters of various insects and animals. When they stilled when Sam did the spell, he figured the eldritch energy of it scared them off, but they’d be back as soon as they knew it was gone. But would they be back if they never ventured this close to town in the first place? 

He knew angels could talk to animals, and animals generally liked them. Or at least they liked Cas. Sam still recalled the time a mouse ended up in the bunker somehow, and Cas talked to it, asked it nicely to leave and not return, and it did just that. As Dean said, “Why do our lives occasionally resemble a fucked up Disney film?” Sam had no idea, but yeah, it did, although not nearly enough. 

With an angel around these parts, you’d think the woods, as thin as they were, would be teeming with life. But it wasn’t. He hadn’t heard a bird in the vicinity, hadn’t seen a nest, and now that he thought about it, where were the bees, the flies, the ants? Hadn’t Cas, during his breakdown phase, talked to bees? So angels could communicate in some fashion with at least some insects and arachnids. (Which, now that he thought about it, might account for the lack of spiders in the bunker. Maybe Cas asked them to leave too.) 

Unless the animals and insects knew something the people didn’t. 

Sam reminded himself of confirmation bias. He could be looking for something to make his argument for him. No rush to judgement. But there were so many weird pieces here, he couldn’t make the puzzle work. He was missing something. 

Sam found himself facing the back of one of the simple A frame homes that seemed to make up this town, and he wondered if the cult had done any building at all when they came here, or if they just took over what was left behind. Sam was thinking the latter. The house looked fine from a distance, but up closer, you could see the wear, the sagging gutters and peeling paint. Much like this case: it started straightforward, and suddenly twisted like a pretzel.

Too much time had elapsed. If Dean was capable of it, there would have been some sounds of fighting, gunshots and cursing, something. He would have found a way to signal Sam if he could. Which meant he couldn’t. Which meant something off the charts terrible had happened. Maybe he was simply unconscious. Was that the best case scenario here?

Sam had angel handcuffs in his backpack, and an angel blade. He took his pack off and put them both in his jacket pocket. He also had a flask filled with holy oil, just in case. He put it in an inner coat pocket.

His phone hummed, and he checked it. Cas had gotten back to him, and when he saw what he’d written, Sam felt a chill that seemed to rocket down his spine and turn his blood to ice. It was an Enochian sigil, all right. 

And according to Cas, it read, “Mine.” 


	5. All That You Love Will Be Eviscerated

The moment Cas checked his phone, and saw what Sam had sent him, he understood the expression about stomachs sinking. Anatomically, that was impossible. Emotionally, it was sadly very real. 

This was all Nathanael, wasn’t it? He hadn’t changed since he’d last seen him eons ago. In fact, he may have gotten worse. 

Had they been wrong from the start? Was Nathanael holding this town? Were the people somehow unaware of this? Certainly Nevaeh was, but, again, raised in a patriarchal society so terrified that women were smarter and better than them that they endeavored to keep them uneducated at every turn, so they'd never tell her. Those societies always failed, of course, but proving their idiocy, none of these groups seemed to learn from history.

Would Nathanael know of his connection to Dean? Castiel was starting to understand disassociation a little better. If he did ... he would hold it against Dean, wouldn’t he? Castiel closed his eyes, and tried to search for that connection to Dean, find a way to ride it to the source, but he couldn’t. After what Rowena and Heaven combined had done to him, he wasn’t sure he could take on a simple demon, never mind a pissed off fellow angel. 

But whatever Dean was going through now? It was because of him. Nathanael was punishing him for it. Castiel could feel his fury rising, and it was good, because it was cleansing and made him feel stronger.

One of the wards died, fading to nothing in his vision, and he was able to step into town, still feeling resistance from the next layer of warding. How many levels were there? This was diabolical. And undoubtedly done on purpose. 

Another ward disappeared as he approached Nevaeh, who was stamping one out off to the side of the road. It had been painted on a stone, small but still powerful, but she’d been able to get some of the paint off. Or was it blood? Hard to say from this distance. “The wards, on the church. They need to be removed.”

She looked towards the church, and her expression changed. Castiel looked, and saw a man had appeared, holding a shotgun. Castiel stepped in front of Nevaeh, in case he got trigger happy. “Where are the others?” the man asked. Castiel felt he now understood the human phrase staring daggers, because that’s what the man appeared to be doing to him. Castiel met his baleful gaze with one of his own.

“You knew this was all a lie, didn’t you, Hiram?” Nevaeh said angrily.

The man was middle aged and pudgy, with a close cropped gray beard and thinning silver hair. Castiel got the sense he was not a good person, but he didn’t know if it was a genuine sense, or simply a judgment based on the circumstances. He also wondered if it mattered at all. “Where’s Sue and Dmitri?” Hiram demanded.

“You’re trying to keep angels out!”

The man now looked confused. “What are you talking about? And who the hell is this?”

“It’s a lie,” Nevaeh went on. It sounded like she had been dying to get this out, and her anger increased in depth and volume as the words tumbled out. “It’s all a lie! The demon possessed aren’t impure, they’re just people! You’ve had us killing people for no reason!”

Hiram scowled at her, glancing between her and Castiel with increasing disgust. “So the demons got to you, did they?” His steel gray eyes settled on Castiel. “You a demon?”

Before he could respond, Nivaeh scoffed. “He’s an angel, you fucking idiot!”

“No he’s not,” he replied dismissively. “Is that what you told her, pretty boy?”

Castiel called up the light in his eyes, and asked, “Did you find Nathanael, or did he come to you?”

Hiram staggered back a few steps, clearly scared by Castiel’s glowing eyes. He tightened his grip on the trigger, but Castiel was done waiting for this man to get a clue. Castiel stepped towards him, grabbed the barrel of the shotgun, and ripped it from his hands, throwing it far away. “I asked you a question,” he said, still walking towards Hiram, who was stumbling back, trying to maintain distance between them and failing quite miserably. “Did you find Nathanael, or did he find you?”

“We ... he said ... what are you?” Hiram asked. He reeked of fear.

“You’ve been told. Answer my question.”

He stammered a moment, caught between terror and defiance. “He ... he said God was coming back, and we could help prepare the way.”

Castiel grabbed Hiram by the collar, and dragged him right up to him. He smelled like tobacco, gunpowder, and venality.“He lied.” He considered punching him for a moment, before thinking better of it. Even in his weakened state, he could accidentally hurt him more than he intended. So he tapped his forehead, and put him to sleep. He hit the ground hard, and Castiel decided that was enough of an injury. For now. 

“Did you kill him?”

“No, he’s asleep.”

“Too bad.” Nevaeh replied, wiping angry tears from her face. 

How could humans be so stupid as to believe a single thing a random angel told them, especially one as unbalanced as Nathanael probably was? Then again, he was starting to understand this group of humans was misguided at the very best. “As soon as you break the symbols on the church, get your sister and leave.”

She seemed surprised. “What? But what about -“

“This will be ugly,” he told her, and it still felt like he was downplaying the danger. 

If Nathanael was as bad as he feared, things would be extremely terrible. Castiel just hoped he’d be strong enough to make him sorry he ever existed. 

**

Killing someone with a hammer was fast, but incredibly messy.

Dean had smashed Sam’s skull until it was completely unrecognizable. It was basically a headless body with a bunch of chunky red soup where the head should have been. Of course, he was putting his all into the swings, which surely impacted the end result. Since he had beyond human strength, pulverization was a breeze. 

Dean had screamed himself hoarse, but he was trapped inside his own mind, watching his body do things against his will. The Mark of Cain had him wrapped up tight, like a constrictor, and had taken over. He couldn’t force or will himself out of it - it had him in an iron grip now, and wouldn’t let go. “Oh, come on Dean, I’m you,” the Mark said. It sounded like himself. “You know you’ve wanted to bash his head in for years. You’re free now! No whiny, ungrateful brat to look after. You can live your own life now.”

The Mark was so powerful, it could have drowned him in the dark, give him merciful oblivion, but no, it wanted him to watch what it was doing in his body. Except it wasn’t his body anymore, was it? Dean was a ghost, trapped between worlds, bodiless and helpless. 

The Mark walked through the Bunker, splashing gasoline on books and Sam’s body, and Cas’s. He was still pinned to the floor by the angel blade he drove through his chest, his wings charred black on the floor behind him. “Oh, come on. You were never sorting out your feelings for the angel. Repressed much, Dean? I mean, I’d be embarrassed for you, but ... nah. You sucked. It’s my time now. And I ain't repressin' nothing, baby."

The Mark emptied the second can of gasoline in the main room, dribbling a trail up the stairs. It stopped half way, and the Mark lobbed the empty can onto the table before digging a book of matches out of his pocket. He lit one, set the whole matchbook on fire, and tossed it down the stairs. 

The gas ignited with a  _ whoomph _ , running through the bunker like the Devil was chasing it. The Mark didn’t bother to watch it all burn, probably because the concentration of gas fumes was too high. 

Outside the bunker it was night, the stars bright and clear in a dark sky, and Dean knew it was objectively beautiful, but it was wrong. Nothing could ever be beautiful again, could it? It had no right to be. 

The bunker door had been left ajar, and smoke was pluming out in boiling black pillars, like the gates of hell had opened up and all the demons were making a run for it. “You know, we could run hell,” the Mark said. “It wouldn’t even be that hard. But we got some stops to make along the way, don’t we?” The Mark pulled Dean’s phone out of his pocket, and started scrolling through his contacts. “Jody, Claire, Donna ... hey, there are some actual women in your life. Who knew? Well, they won’t be for long.”

Dean wanted to scream, to rage, but there was no point. He’d exhausted himself slamming his head against a concrete wall until it was bloody and fractured, and it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. The Mark liked feeling him squirm, hearing him scream. His pain was an aphrodisiac for it. His misery was the only drug it needed. 

“Nonsense, Dean-o. I need as many drugs as you’ve taken in your life. Which means ... everything but heroin, right? And crack. You never did meth, did you? I guess not. Couldn’t keep your pretty face doing that shit. Maybe I’ll have to get around to rectifying that.” 

The Mark walked up to the Impala, and patted its hood. “Bet you don’t give a shit what I do to this now, huh? Come on, Dean, put up a fight. What fun are you if you don’t? Come on, piggy, squeal for me."

He wanted to die, but the worst part was, he knew he was never going to. He was going to be stuck a passenger in his own body until someone figured out a way to kill this monstrosity. And the best chances of that were currently being burned along with the bunker.

Dean picked up a faint sense of anxiety from the Mark, the echo of an echo, and was shocked when the Mark turned, and suddenly they were flying through the air. Dean barely felt the hit, as he was almost completely detached from his body, but it must have been something, because the Mark landed so far from the bunker he could barely see the glow of the flames licking at the door. 

“And where exactly do you think you’re going?” A voice said. It was familiar, but Dean didn’t really place it until the man emerged from the shadows. 

Gabriel? Wasn’t he dead? Or ... no, did he fool them again? Yeah, that figured. 

“Go back to fucking around, deadbeat angel,” the Mark said, standing up with a slight groan. Archangels packed enough of a punch that it got through to the Mark. 

“I wasn’t a big fan of Cas, but he deserved a shit ton better than that,” Gabriel said, pointing back at the bunker. “And frankly, I didn’t like getting the note that I’d have to deal with your ass again. Shouldn’t you be in Cain?”

“Oh grandpa, you slept through so much. Sorry I’m gonna have to kill you before you get caught up.” The Mark had the First Blade in its hand, and it charged Gabriel.

It was a sloppy attack, brazen, and was never going to work on someone as professionally slippery as Gabriel. He didn’t so much as dodge as simply stop being where he had been when the Mark lunged, and as he quickly adapted to the lack of target, Gabriel kicked him in the back, sending him face first to the ground.

With a snarl of rage the Mark jumped back up to his feet and managed to tackle Gabriel, sending them crashing back to the dirt. But Gabriel spun, putting the Mark beneath him, and started delivering thundering blows that even Dean could feel, as detached from himself as he was. He got a sense of bones crunching, of blood welling up in his throat, of teeth shattering like spun glass. A human would have been dead; any mortal or semi-mortal being would have been dead. Gabriel could have crushed his skull like the Mark had crushed Sam’s. 

But the Mark wasn’t mortal; it was a stain, a virus, a curse, and it could take whatever punishment Gabriel wanted to dish out. Dean heard this strange crackling sound, which he initially dismissed as a sound of the fire, but they were too far away. He eventually realized it was bones knitting back together, the Mark asserting dominance over the broken vessel. It would keep Dean’s body intact as long as it needed to. Dismemberment wouldn’t even be enough to keep it down. 

Gabriel put his hand on the Mark’s head, and suddenly everything was white. Dean could actually feel it. It was somehow searing hot and ice cold at the same time; it was the burning rays of the sun, and a scouring arctic wind. All and nothing. 

The pain was the first thing he felt. Once the heat and the cold of the light had faded, it felt like his skull was being held together by duct tape. His jaw was all but crushed, and he couldn’t breathe through whatever was left of his nose. He tasted only blood and ashes. It took him a moment to realize he was back in control of his own body, such as it was. He was too broken to move and dying, but at least he was free of the Mark for a second. 

Gabriel looked down into his face. “Dean, I can only send this thing away for a couple seconds. To genuinely lock it up ... I’m sorry, dude, but I gotta do it from the inside.”

Dean didn’t understand what he was saying. Blood stung his eyes, and he wondered, if he closed them, if he’d be dead for good. He wanted to be dead for good now. He wanted to go and never come back. He didn’t deserve to live, and didn’t see how he could. 

Gabriel grabbed his head, and made him focus. “Do you understand what I’m saying? I can only keep the Mark in check if I’m sharing the vessel. Dean you have to let me in. We’re running out of time. I can bring your brother back, but you gotta work with me here. Say yes.”

He wasn’t lying. Dean could feel the dark tide of the Mark surging within him, becoming a creeping numbness crawling up his legs. It was a living death he would never escape. 

What could he do? What was he supposed to do? 

 


	6. We're All Going Home In An Ambulance

Sam braced for being kidnapped, his hand around the hilt of his angel blade in his pocket. Of course, this was assuming the angel allowed him to remain conscious, which seemed doubtful, but what the hell, be prepared for any eventuality. 

When he stepped into the meager backyard of the house, nothing happened. Okay, so Nathanael was satisfied with having Dean for now. Boy, was that a terrible thought.

Sam was sure Dean wasn’t dead, because Nathanael could have killed him as easily - or even easier - than he took him. Which meant there were no good reasons why he hadn’t shown up to say he had Dean as a hostage and he’d do something terrible to him if they didn’t back off. That might have been too logical a thought for Nathanael, though. 

That was an obvious problem going forward. How did an unhinged angel think? Trying to think like an average angel was kind of impossible, because they were essentially alien beings, drawing from another set of beliefs and experiences entirely. Trying to think of that, but also with instability, was a sucker’s game. 

Okay, so what he had to work with here was an unexpected, devastating attack, that might not actually hurt an angel much at all, but would be surprising, even jarring. A moment’s hesitation could make the difference between life and death. 

As he walked between houses, he saw someone had some empty six pack bottles stacked next to the trash can. Didn’t believe in recycling either? Still, Sam could use them, so he took two of the empties as he walked along. These gave him an idea. He tucked them into his backpack.

He was pleased with how his sleep spell worked, because he honestly thought he’d have been confronted by someone by now. Either no one saw him, or they were asleep. But once again, the question that struck him in the woods struck him here - where were the animals? Not one barking dog, not one scuttling mouse. Creepy as fuck. 

That had to be number one on the list of bad signs in any given area. If it wasn’t, Sam was going to go back to the bunker and write it into every hunter’s guide he could find. Insects also gone? That was a big, flashing run like hell sign.

It was so quiet, he could hear distant yelling. Was that ... it sounded like Nevaeh. Did she come into town, regardless of the warning? Or had Cas come with her? It did occur to him that, if Dean were in real trouble, Cas might know, and he wouldn’t wait. 

He finally found an angel ward, all of which had been well hidden, and used a marker to draw a line over it, which was enough to cancel it out. Since Castiel didn’t appear, Sam assumed he had indeed heard Nevaeh, and she and Cas had come into town. He was a little concerned, but not a lot, because he knew Cas would protect her. He was the rare angel who felt protecting humans was part of his mission statement. 

Sam also became aware of a scuff of gravel up ahead, around the bend of a house. Someone or someones waiting to ambush him.There was proof his sleep spell didn’t completely work. Quietly, he slipped off his backpack and left it on the ground, as it could be used against him in a fight. Never give an opponent anything they could grab onto, and maybe choke you with if they were good enough or lucky enough. 

He went ahead and walked forward, like he was oblivious, but when they tried to grab him he threw out an elbow that caught one square in the nose and shattered it, sending blood spurting from his face. The second one went for him, lunging with an upper cut, which Sam dodged before nailing the guy with an upper cut of his own. Luckily, he had a glass jaw and went down like a sack of hammers. 

The guy with the bloody nose wasn’t interested in fighting anymore, so Sam left him kneeling down, clutching his face. Sam had shrugged his pack on when he heard the sound of a hammer being pulled back on a gun. He glanced back, and found a third man had emerged from behind the front of the house. “Put ‘em up,” the man said. He had that odd build of stick figure like limbs but a substantial beer gut you saw on some guys. Sam honestly didn’t know the conditions necessary to result in that, but it was more common than he would have thought. He was also holding a sizable handgun, and Sam was willing to bet if he fired the thing, he’d be unable to handle the kick back and hurt himself. “Did you do the thing?”

“The thing?” Sam replied.

“Made everyone pass out?”

“They’re not passed out. They’re asleep.”

He shrugged his bony shoulders. “Who cares? Undo it.”

“Can’t. They’ll wake up in a couple hours.” Sam decided he’d had enough questions about his spell, and the least he could do was try and clue him in. “You’re aware all the animals have gone, right?”

He squinted at him in confusion. His eyes were such a pale blue they almost weren’t a color at all. “You scared off the animals?”

“Not me. Your angel.” The way he stiffened at the mention, Sam knew he was at least aware there was one hiding in town. “We found at least one trap out in the woods. Empty. How long have the animals been gone?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Angels can talk to animals. Did you know that? Maybe he didn’t tell you. Animals generally like angels, although cats can be extremely indifferent. Anyways, either your angel said something to them, or they picked up something they didn’t like, so they left. Even the insects. How long have they been gone?”

Sam knew the guy thought he was nuts. But he also saw the wheels turning in his eyes as he considered what must have been a minor mystery around here. “Boy, are you touched?”

It took Sam a moment to remember that was what some people used to call the mentally ill. “Nathanael is a danger to you and everyone here. You should leave as soon as possible, and get rid of all the angel warding, because I have a feeling Heaven’s looking for him.”

Now the man canted his head to the side, as if trying to figure out what Sam was. “What the holy hell is angel warding?”

“The sigils painted all over town. They keep angels away.”

He scoffed. “They do not. They’re blessing of holy protection.”

“Is that what he told you? He’s lying.”

“Angels don’t lie.”

“They d-” Sam’s reply was cut off by what sounded like a minor explosion in town, loud enough to make them both jump. Sam felt lucky that the guy didn’t accidentally pull the trigger. 

“What the hell was that?” the man demanded.

“Either Dean or Cas,” Sam guessed. It was the most likely explanation. He sincerely hoped it wasn’t Nathanael finally getting a clue that he was under attack. 

Not that it mattered. Sam had a plan, and while it wouldn’t buy them a lot of time, maybe it would buy them enough. 

**

 

Dean knew he had to say yes. He had to save the others, the world. He had to keep the Mark locked up.

But something in his gut was telling him no. “You’re not Gabriel,” he said, sure of that as he had ever been of anything. Did it even matter? If it was an angel and could help him, he should take it.

Yet this was wrong. Beyond the waking nightmare of the Mark taking him over and killing everyone he loved, there was something ... off. His gut was telling him to trust nothing, even as he gave in to despair. 

Gabriel looked down at him in wonder. “What?”

“No.” It was a single syllable. No matter how ruined his face, that had to get through. 

Fury bloomed on Gabriel’s face, confirming that he was right, this wasn’t Gabriel. He didn’t have an angry face in Dean’s experience, just a pissy one. He grabbed Dean by the neck and threw him bodily into a tree. He could feel bones snap, but it was weird. That partial remove was still in effect, even though the Mark ...

Hey, where the hell had the Mark gone? He couldn’t feel it anymore.

Gabriel - the thing pretending to be Gabriel - was still holding him by the neck. “You’ve killed everyone, you stupid asshole! You have nothing but a life of endless torment ahead of you! Is that really what you want?”

“Kill me if you can.” Dean actually didn’t know why he said that. Except it felt like this whatever could have killed him any time it chose, but it wasn’t doing so, for whatever reason. So he wasn’t nearly as powerless as he felt.

Gabriel made a noise of disgust, and threw him casually, like a sack of garbage.

Dean woke up before he hit the ground. 

He was chained to a desk. Why did that seem familiar? 

He used his tongue to feel around his mouth for broken teeth, and found them all intact. Great. Mind games. 

“What is wrong with you?” Nathanael demanded, slamming his hand on the desk and breaking it. The front part popped off like a loose fender. Sadly, the part of the desk with the chain bolt in it was still attached.

Dean sat back up, and saw that Nathanael’s mental unraveling was starting to have more physical signs. He was still in Cas with whirling rainbow eyes guise, but he’d undone the tie and rolled up the sleeves, and ... Dean had to double check, to make sure he saw what he was seeing.

Yep, his eyes didn’t deceive him. The flesh was melting off Nathanael’s left hand, like wax off a shitty dummy. Wow, that was so gross, and yet, kind of fascinating. Did he not realize that was happening?

“Do you want an answer to that question?” Dean wondered. “It’s a long list.”

Nathanael leaned on the remaining part of the desk and snarled right into his face. “I broke you.”

“Yeah, and no one’s done that before. Not Hell, not The Mark, not ... oh, wait. Yeah, they did. Pick a new game, that one’s old.”

He grabbed Dean’s hair and painfully twisted his neck down, which probably would have hurt even more if Dean wasn’t now aware this was all part of Nathanael’s mind games. He was one of those angels, like Zachariah. He was a master of mind fuckery. Too bad Dean’s mind had been fucked so many times, he hardly felt it anymore. “I should snap your head off.”

“Yep, you should.”

That made Nathanael study him, like a fascinating bug he just found in his sandwich. “You think I won’t do it?”

“I think you’re capable of almost anything. I also think you want something from me, or I wouldn’t still be alive.”

“I only want your pet to watch you die.”

“Cas? Okay. It has nothing to do with your vessel breaking down? Got it.”

He slammed Dean’s head down into the desk hard. It felt very real. His consciousness spun for a moment, and he tasted blood again. Damn, he was fucking tired of all the head injuries. He should really start wearing a helmet before he became permanently punch drunk. “You are an insect beneath my contempt. As such, I guess I should just start pulling your wings off, shouldn’t I?"

Before Dean knew what was happening, the setting had changed. He was now kneeling in what looked like a medieval courtyard, replete with the overwhelming smell of shit. He thought his arms had been tied to something, and looking for confirmation, he found they were bound up with metal and leather straps that led straight to big ass horses, one on his left, and one on his right. He puzzled over this, until suddenly he remembered reading about how they used to draw and quarter people.

Oh no. Oh, fuck no. 

Nathanael was now standing in front of him as crazy ass Cas, but now wearing a big, ornate King’s crown, and a big purple velvet cape. It was so ridiculous he would have laughed, except his arms were about to be ripped off, so it was hard to find the funny at the moment.

“Do you want to know how ludicrously weak and flawed humans are? I lied to these stupid mammals every day for weeks, and not one of them figured it out, or got the least bit suspicious. Everyone of them is a gullible fucking moron, and every single one of them would die for me if I asked. And I have asked.” He smiled, one that was more a swallowed scream, lips skinned back over bright white teeth that were now a collection of razor sharp fangs. “Their bodies are as weak as their minds. I’ve burned through five vessels in a year. But you - you smell like power.”

“This is a really weird time to come on to me.”

Nathanael grabbed him by the chin again. “Does it help, Dean-o? Joking through the fear? Did it ever keep you from getting broken?”

It was a shame he couldn’t lie to an angel. “No.”

This smile was more genuine, perhaps because it was gloating. “I didn’t think so. But it keeps you from being scared for a few seconds. You’ve spent most of your life afraid, haven’t you? Does anyone know? Is that your deep, dark secret?”

“I probably have deeper and darker ones.” Jokes were often facts played off in a dismissive manner, and this was one of those. 

His irises continued spinning, and Dean wondered if it would be better or worse if there was a roulette ball bouncing around in there, waiting to settle. It probably would have been more ridiculous, but he didn’t know if it would play up the crazy quotient. Nathanael had honestly maxed out in that area. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to rip your arms off. For realsies, not only in your head. Then I’m going to rip your legs off. If you still haven’t said yes to me by then, I’m going to rip off your dick, and find out exactly how much intestines humans need to live. I mean, you guys have a crazy amount. Have you ever seen it? That’s gotta be a design flaw, because there’s no fucking way you need that much. And if you haven’t said yes by then, I’m going to put you back together and start all over again. I will do it as many times as necessary. We could be here all year. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

Dean had been tortured enough in his life that he fucking hated it, and to be honest, if he didn’t know Cas and Sam were out there, he would have said yes. But he just had to hold on until they got here. He really hoped they hurried the fuck up. “Why do you guys always jump to torture? You’ve never heard the expression about getting more flies with honey than vinegar? I mean, take me out to dinner, buy me some drinks, butter me up. Get me drunk enough I’ll probably say yes to anything.” Oh damn - did he reveal one of his deep dark secrets? Well, to be completely honest, it probably wasn’t much of a secret. Crowley had most likely told half the planet by now.

“Again with the jokes.” Nathanael patted his cheek a little too hard. He then turned and shouted, “Yaah!”

Both horses started pulling in different directions, and the pain was indescribable. He could feel his shoulder joints separating, the muscles in his back seizing against such incredible pressure, and then his skin started tearing. He would have started having Hell flashbacks if his mind wasn’t so overloaded by agony.

He was screaming so loudly, he almost didn’t hear the explosion. 

 


	7. Killing My Heart

Nevaeh was smearing the angel wards on the side of the church when Dean started screaming. 

It set Castiel’s teeth on edge - an odd saying, but he understood it - and he waited impatiently for her to get the rest. Of course there were four on the outside, so he had no choice but to listen and become increasingly furious. He felt his rage like a ball of heat wedged beneath his breastbone, and he decided to channel it. Nathanael knew he was coming anyway; there was so surprise to be had.

As soon as the last ward vanished he blasted the door, the energy making it explode into splinters and clearing the way inside the church. As soon as he stepped through the threshold, he felt a surge of energy, and looked around to find the mostly empty church had several sigils painted in blood on the inside, including ones meant to heighten an angel’s power. Ironically enough, Castiel felt them working on him too. 

“Cass-Cass,” Nathanael said, full of false cheer and poorly concealed contempt. He was in the vessel of a middle aged man with light brown hair and a trim build, with streaks of blood running from his eyes, and what looked like burnt patches of skin on his cheeks, hallmarks of a vessel reaching its absolute limit. “Long time no see. You look different than your last vessel. More male-y, huh? Looks good on you.”

Dean was chained down to the altar, virtually the only thing left in the church. Nathanael had drawn a sigil in blood on his forehead, and even though Castiel didn’t have a good look at it from here, he was sure it was one allowing him to have a complete mental hold on him. He was essentially slaved to Nathanael’s mind, and whatever befell him would befall Dean too. There were so many symbols that Sam and Dean didn’t know about that he had never told them. Because sometimes, you needed to keep secrets. But it added a complication, as he needed to get that sigil off of Dean before he could do anything to Nathanael. 

“Free him now,” Cas demanded. He wanted to physically rip his head off. No, it wouldn’t kill Nathanael, but it would feel good. And it might give some mercy to the vessel, which was most likely dead and rotting. 

Nathanael put his hand on Dean’s chest. “You mean him? Your precious Dean-o? I don’t think so. I mean, you look like you want to kill me, Cass-Cass.”

“The nickname is incredibly irritating.”

“It is, isn’t it? That’s why I like it.” Castiel saw the hand Nathanael had on Dean’s chest start to glow, and he didn’t want to see what he intended to do. 

With the sigils on the ceiling artificially boosting his meager power supply, he was in front of Nathanael in less than a heartbeat, and shoved him. It was meant to be a harmless gesture, unable to hurt Dean in any way, but he forgot about the power boost, and he sent Nathanael flying through the back of the church. Dean jolted as if shocked, but it still wasn’t a fatal blow. 

He moved to wipe the bloody sigil off Dean’s forehead, but he immediately discovered it wasn’t written on him. It was carved into his forehead. The blood was fresh, and all his own. Nathanael may have been crazy, but he remained crafty too. Damn it.

The millisecond before he could heal him, Nathanael came flying back through the broken wall of the church and slammed into Castiel like an angelic wrecking ball. He sailed back until he impacted with the only pew left in the church, which collapsed into kindling under his weight. “Did you really think I was going to make it that easy on you? Have you forgotten who you’re dealing with?”

Castiel stood up, mentally running through a list of things that he could do to Nathanael that might not severely hurt Dean. Could he incapacitate him long enough to get the mark off Dean? It wouldn’t take long. He wouldn’t even have to completely heal him. Partial would be enough. 

And Nathanael knew that as well as he did. Damn it.

“What the hell is going on in here?” A man asked. He had an absurdly over sized handgun, and an expression on his face like he didn’t understand a single thing.

He also got hit on the back of the head almost immediately and fell down in the doorway. Sam appeared behind him, and upon seeing Nathanael, he pulled out his angel blade. “Sam, wait,” Castiel said. He glanced over at him briefly, but kept his eyes mainly on Nathanael, which was smart. “He’s marked Dean so that whatever we do to him, Dean will suffer the same injury.”

Now he had Sam’s undivided attention. “What?”

Nathanael let out a deeply artificial laugh, and put his hand on Dean’s chest. “You didn’t tell him about our bag of tricks, did you? You think angels are benevolent creatures, boy? We’re as ancient as fuck, and we don’t appreciate ticks like you painting us as fluffy little lapdogs who clean up after your shit. You are parasites on this Earth, and you’ve given us ample reason to never give a fuck about you or your kind ever again.”

Sam shrugged, conceding the point. “Don’t care. Let him go.”

Nathanael sneered at him. “Or what? You gonna get me with your little pigsticker there? Newsflash, sunshine - kill me, kill your bro. But maybe that makes it easier on you, huh? Get to live your own life, free of your suffocating asshole of a brother.”

“You can’t win this fight,” Castiel said. Which was true, even though he still had no idea how he was going to free Dean before they could kill him. Maybe, if Sam could distract him, Castiel could heal Dean and they could be done with this. While he honestly had enough angel blood on his hands to last him three or four more eons, Castiel really wanted to stab Nathanael through whatever passed for his withered and gnarled heart. 

Nathanael turned his leer on him. “Can’t I, though? You’re not gonna hurt your precious honey bun here, and I doubt the human is gonna risk his big bro either. Hey, human, you know how we die, right? I mean, you got an angel blade, I assume you know how we die. If I do, your brother is going to spontaneously combust. Isn’t that crazy? But it’s the closest approximation of how we die. Part of me kind of wants to see it, not gonna lie.”

Sam glanced at Castiel for confirmation, but Castiel could only dip his head. He didn’t know for a fact that would happen, he’d never see an angel connected to a human die, but it made a strange sort of logical sense. Angels were energy beings, consumed by their own energies. Spontaneous human combustion probably was the closet translation. 

“What do you want?” Sam asked. He hadn’t put away the angel blade, but the odds of him using it were impossible to calculate, as they went into negative numbers.

“What do I want? Hmm, what do I want?” Nathanael made a show of thinking about this, stroking his chin, and leaving deep furrows in the flesh of his face. He wasn’t sure if that was intentional or accidental. “Tell me, Cass-Cass, what is it with this bloodline? They’re angel vessels, aren’t they?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“I do! I do indeed. Thanks for bringing them by, by the way. You’re a pal.”

“So you’re not torturing your vessel on purpose,” Sam said. “You’re just falling apart.”

“These people are weak. They don’t have your genes.” He squinted at Sam, like he was far away, even though it was an unnecessary affectation. “Holy shit! You were a Lucifer vessel?!” He did that irritating laugh again. Which was the whole point of it. He doubted Nathanael had anything close to a sense of humor. “Goddamn! You could probably hold a whole host of lesser angels before you exploded like a meat balloon.” He stroked Dean’s chest in a very creepy way. “Goddamn! And he’s the Michael sword? I’ve hit the mother-lode!” He laughed again. “The damage I could do in this boy! I’ll finally get my pure Earth after all.”

  
“Take me,” Sam said, putting his angel blade in his pocket and stepping inside the church.

“Sam, no,” Castiel said. Was he serious, or was he trying to buy time? It was unclear; he had a better read on Dean’s emotions than Sam’s, for obvious reasons. Dean thought he was the emotionally reserved of the two of them, but far from it. Dean, to borrow another human expression, wore his heart on his sleeve, covered with a thin skin of bluster that anyone who knew him could see through like an x-ray. Sam was actually more of a tough read, as he considered things quietly, more internal than external. When Sam’s emotions truly showed themselves, he was either unguarded or in a very low place. 

“You think you can’t do damage with me?” Sam said, walking farther into the church. Castiel simply watched and waited. If Sam gave him an opening, he would take it. “I was Lucifer’s vessel. I was Azazel’s weapon.”

“That’s close enough,” Nathanael said. He was intrigued, that was obvious, and Castiel didn’t like that. “So you’ve had a demon in you too? Fascinating. You’re like a rental car, or a cheap hooker? Any port in a storm?”

Sam frowned at that. “I can do a hell of a lot more than him.”

“Mm-hmm. And this isn’t a ploy to, say, get me distracted so Cass-Cass can save your bro, and make me explode you, is it?” At Sam’s confused look, Nathanael added, “Oh, I’m not taking you up on your offer. I’m going to make your eyeballs explode in their sockets, so you die horribly while I kick the shit out of your guardian angel over there, who’s too terrified of hurting his boy here. Isn’t it funny? Angels are supposed to be above lesser being things, like feelings, but Cass-Cass has a whole barrel full of them. Don’t you Cassie?” Nathanael put a hand on Dean’s throat. “See, he wouldn’t like it if I hurt you, but he is absolutely livid at the idea of me hurting golden boy here. “

“I’m not a fan of yours either,” Sam said. 

Was Nathanael smiling? It was hard to say. He was doing it poorly. He was showing all his teeth like a snarling dog. “Oh, that wounds me. An insect not knowing its betters. If I gave a shit, that would really sting.” Nathanael quickly turned his eyes on Castiel. The whites of his vessel’s eyes were filled with blood. Castiel wondered if the power boosting sigils were causing the vessels to degrade at a much more rapid pace. There was always a price to pay when using these symbols. “No, Cassie, don’t even think about it. I’ll crush his throat before you get anywhere near me.”

“Kill Dean and there’s no reason for us not to kill you,” Sam pointed out.

Yes, this was reeking of a so called Mexican standoff. Nathanael had grabbed a hostage, but now couldn’t think his way out of the situation. He never was very good at strategy. “Okay, boy, you want your brother back in one piece? Kill Cassie, and I’ll leave. You and your brother can walk out of here.”

“Uh huh. Do you honestly think I’m that stupid?” Sam replied.

“Oh heavens yes. You’re here, aren’t you? And you thought you could win a fight with me. A celestial being. Return to the water you came from, tadpole. You ‘re outclassed here.” Nathanael made a flicking gesture with his hand, and Sam went flying out of the church.

Castiel made his move then, tackling Nathanael and sending them both out of the church, into a barren field out behind it, that functioned as an ad hoc graveyard. He intended to slip the angel cuffs on him, but before he could, Nathanael kicked him back, and hopped up to his feet, holding his own angel blade. Castiel assumed he was going to use it on him, but to his horror, Nathanael turned it on himself, holding the point to the base of his own throat. “Come on, what does this piece of shit Neanderthal mean to you exactly, Cassie? I don’t get it. I mean, the mouth on him. And his brain! Jesus. Don’t you want to smite the hell out of him, bring him back, and do it again? I know I want to.”

“If you hate humanity so much, why didn’t you join with Lucifer?”

“That asshole? Please. Thought he was better than the rest of it, when he was a whiny pissy pants little baby. He was the worst of us. No better than humans.”

Castiel couldn’t argue with that, and wouldn’t even if he disagreed, which he didn’t. He also didn’t add that Lucifer, as deranged as he was, probably wouldn’t have accepted his help. There were some kinds of crazy that were impossible to deal with. 

“So what’s the play here, Cass-Cass? You can’t hurt me without hurting your precious Dean-o. But you can’t let me stomp out Sammy like the bug he is, either. Gonna let me kill you?” Castiel glared at him as a response. “Okay. But you know this town worships me, right? I can thrown them at you and the tadpole. Can you kill all of them? Can he? ‘Cause these people will definitely die for me. I can tell them to have their children attack!” He laughed again. “Can you imagine? What could those little sprogs do to any of us? But they will. To them I’m a god.”

Castiel had been aware that Nevaeh, despite his specific warning, had returned, and was somewhere in the trees. But even he was surprised when she opened fire, and shot Nathanael in the back. 


	8. Dark Window

Castiel felt like screaming, but didn’t, because it was far too late. He had to hope that the shot wasn’t fatal. 

It certainly wasn’t to Nathanael, who turned to face her. “Little insect,” he said. “How do you expect to hurt me with a projectile weapon?”

Castiel was aware Sam was around, so when he heard a soft sound by his foot, he looked down and saw a flask. Sam must have thrown it to him, but why? When he was reaching for it, he understood. 

It wasn’t alcohol in the flask. It was holy oil. 

While distracted taunting Nevaeh, Castiel quickly poured the holy oil out in an arc around Nathanael. He couldn’t cover the back, but he had to assume Sam had a plan for that.

“Six guesses what I’m gonna do to you,” Nathanael taunted. “Guess! Come on, it’s no fun if you don’t play.” Nevaeh was frozen in a way that suggested Nathanael had done it to her, and Castiel couldn’t see enough of her to know if she was in mortal distress or not. 

Since Nathanael’s back was now to him, it did allow Castiel to see the gunshot wound. It was barely bleeding - more confirmation that the vessel was long dead - and while it was difficult to say, with the variety of ammunition and muzzle velocities, Castiel was sure it wasn’t an instantly fatal wound. If he could heal Dean within the next ten minutes, that should be survivable. He hoped. 

Sam lobbed a flaming beer bottle at Nathanael, but it crashed behind him, and completed the circle of holy oil, while also setting it on fire. As Nathanael gasped and turned, Castiel held up his hand and blasted Nathanael’s hand with a burst of angel energy, the one holding the blade. It sent the knife flying out of his hand, outside of the circle. It also left a cut on his neck, but it was very shallow. 

“What have you done?” Nathanael screeched, his voice taking on a hard edge that made the humans around him wince. 

Sam was walking towards them, and Castiel gave him a nod of thanks as he turned and walked back to the church.

He honestly didn’t know if he had enough power to heal Dean, but he assumed those power boosting sigils would come in handy.

**

Nathanael stood within the flaming circle of holy oil, blood weeping from his vessel’s eyes, looking like a decaying ghost falling apart before Sam’s eyes. Logically, he knew he should feel bad for Nathanael. He wasn’t made crazy. Something happened to him, but unlike Cas, who at least had a family around him to support him after his breakdown, Nathanael probably had no one, and his downward spiral continued, until he forgot which way was up. But Sam couldn’t muster up much pity. How many people had died because of him? Dozens was probably kind. Hundreds was most likely closer.

“Let me out of here now!” Nathanael demanded. “I’ll -“

“You’ll what, kill my brother? I think he’s okay.” Or he’d better be. He was sure Cas would take care of him. Sam was also sure he was going to kill this bastard. There really was no other way forward.

“You think I can’t still destroy you, insect?”

Sam held up the other beer bottle, no longer empty, with holy oil and a lighter fluid soaked rag stuffed in the top. All Sam needed to do was light it. “Do you know how close you are to being burned alive right now?”

That made him pause and visually scan him. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I know you’re sick. That’s the only reason I haven’t thrown this yet.”

“So your brother isn’t the only psycho in the family.”

“That’s a little like Hannibal Lecter calling Freddy Krueger crazy, isn’t it?”

Nathanael tilted his head in a way that must have been universal angel body language for not understanding something. “What?”

“Never mind. Dean would have appreciated that one.” He would have, too. “Was it worth it? All the pain, all the death? Did it make you happy?”

Nathanael smiled. It was more genuine than his earlier mocking leer. “It made me truly joyful. I’m only sorry I couldn’t kill more of you ridiculous vermin.”

Sam wondered why he asked the question, when a horrible reply like that was the only possible response. 

“You!” Dean exclaimed angrily. The mark was gone from his forehead, and these was nothing but smears of blood to say it was ever there. Cas looked exhausted, and was leaning against the ragged wall of the church. Healing Dean must have wiped him out. “You motherfucker. Who’s got an angel blade? I need to stab him so full of holes he’ll look like a fucking whiffle angel.”

Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out his angel blade, which he held out hilt first to Dean. “Do the honors.”

Dean gave him an incredulous look, like he couldn’t believe Sam would let him just straight up murder the creep, but honestly, they couldn’t leave him alive. He was far too dangerous, and it was unlikely Heaven would be any more merciful.

Dean took the blade.

“Whoa, hold the phone here,” Nathanael said. “I could have killed you at any point, and I didn’t.”

“Yeah, because torturing me was more fun,” Dean snapped. He looked at Sam, fury wild in his eyes. “Did you know this fucker had me drawn and quartered? By horses.”

Sam looked back at Nathanael, genuinely shocked. What level of cruelty was that? It was hard to fathom. No wonder Dean looked so crazed. 

Nathanael’s eyes took on a panicked air, and when he grabbed his own arm, Sam wasn’t sure what to expect. But somehow it wasn’t ripping the arm off his own vessel from the shoulder joint, and dropping it on the circle, disrupting the ring of flaming holy oil. Before Sam could throw the bottle, Nathanael sent out a blast from his remaining hand that sent both Sam and Dean flying backwards. When Sam hit the ground, he felt the glass break.

“You don’t have what it takes to hold me, you stupid insects!” Nathanael snapped, holding up his lone hand, which glowed like the sun. Blood barely leaked from his shoulder stump. “And I’m the only one who does any killing around h-” 

The rest of the word was lost as a silver spike protruded through his chest, bleeding light at the edges. Cas ripped the angel blade out of Nathanael’s back, and Nathanael had time to look at him in utter horror before light exploded out his eyes and mouth, and he screamed an inhuman sound, something high and sharp enough that it would have broken glass if there were any intact windows available. 

Nathanael’s tattered vessel hit the ground, and Cas stumbled, clearly at the end of his strength for today. Dean was up on his feet in no time, sliding an arm around Cas’s shoulders and holding him up. “I’ve got you,” he said, reassuring Cas. It was very sweet. Sam would be damned if he ever told him that.

Nevaeh appeared, walking across the graveyard. She looked shaken, but otherwise unharmed. “Is he really dead?”

“Angels don’t get much deader,” Dean said. “And who the fuck rips off their own arm to escape an angel trap? That’s just ... wow. Beyond Charles Manson level psycho.”

She gasped when she saw Nathanael’s body. No, strike that - she gasped when she saw the black wings charred into the dying grass around his body. 

“He really was an angel,” she said, her mouth still hidden behind her hand. 

“What Jenny told you was correct,” Sam said. “Angels aren’t always good. Although they’re rarely quite this bad.”

“Yeah, this guy was a whole other level of suck,” Dean said. He then glanced around. “You get Esther?”

She nodded, finally tearing her eyes away from the remains of Nathanael. “I told her to head for the car, and came back. I wanted to make sure the fucker was dead.”

“Mission accomplished,” Sam told her, looking around. The cult members weren’t going to be happy when they woke up and found their angel messiah dead. 

Dean must have picked up on that, because he said, “We should get the fuck outta Dodge, shouldn’t we?”

“Yeah, we really shouldn’t be here when they wake up.”

Sam led the way back into the woods, with Nevaeh trailing behind, and Dean and Cas bringing up the rear, Dean still helping Cas in a complete reversal of what had happened maybe ten minutes before. 

But hey - they were all walking out of here, and Nathanael was gone. That was a win.

**

As it turned out, Nevaeh had doubts about her cult before she got possessed by Jenny.

She told them she’d used the internet to connect with this woman in California who it turned out was a specialist in re-acclimating kids from cults into “regular” society. Sam had done some quick investigating, but found she was quite legit, had written several well received books, and ran a program that mostly helped women and children who escaped from cults. So when Nevaeh and Esther left, they felt better about her having a safe place to go. They did give her their phone numbers, just in case something went wrong or weird. Even weird wrong. Dean felt they had their own specialty in weird wrong.

Also, Esther was a cute kid who totally gave him Sammy vibes. Which was weird, but also, kind of nice. Hopefully she’d be okay too. 

When they returned to the bunker, Dean’s nerves still felt jangly. He had to get used to that as something that might happen for a while. You didn’t recover quickly from being drawn and quartered, although technically it hadn’t happened in the real world. But it felt real, and that was hard to scrub out of your brain. Drinking helped a little. Cas offered to try and put up a mental block, erase it from his mind, but Dean wasn’t convinced that would work, and besides, Cas was still recovering from everything that had happened to him before Stone Creek. He totally exhausted himself there, but Dean knew he’d done it for him. Of course he had. Cas usually came through for him when he needed him. 

He had other, more immediate problems, didn’t he? The Darkness, for one. Dean honestly didn’t have time to be traumatized by being tortured by an angel. Hell, it wasn’t even the first time that’d happened. That was another thing he and Sam needed specialized therapy for - angel torture. And Cas could join them as well. Man, their lives were sad.

Sam had to make it slightly worse. While Dean was cooking dinner, doing something normal to make him feel a little more centered in the real world - and absolutely not think about how it felt getting his arms ripped off - Sam came in to get a drink, and asked, “Do you think he’s the only one?”

Dean looked up from chopping peppers, not sure if he’d missed a previous comment, or if this was something out of the blue. “Who, what?”

“Nathanael. I mean, Cas had his own breakdown, and Nathanael was clearly disturbed.”

Dean snorted. “Disturbed? That asshole was nuttier than an entire factory full of peanut butter.”

“Right, and from what Cas told us, he may have always been a little unhinged. But this makes two angels that we know of who’ve had a kind of break with sanity. Do you think there could be more out there?”

Dean didn’t like to think about that at all. At least Cas’s breakdown didn’t lead to him setting up his own messianic cult and murdering people. “Well, two out of how many angels? Those aren’t bad odds. They’re a lot less crazy then us humans.”

“True. But considering how powerful they are ... isn’t one crazy angel bad enough?”

Dean sighed, pouring all his chopped peppers in a pan. “Dude. I’m trying to pretend I’m normal for a few minutes. Don’t bring this up.”

Sam smiled briefly, although it also looked like a grimace. “I admire your ability to pretend any of us are normal for any amount of time.”

“It’s called denial. You should check it out.” Suddenly, he remembered Nathanael asking him if the joking helped. You know what? Fuck it, it did help. Dean imagined the jokes were helping to keep him sane. Well, relatively sane. It was probably debatable. Still, he wasn’t Nathanael level crazy, and after everything he’d been through, that was kind of a small miracle.

“You know that’s equally messed up, even if you know you’re in denial?”

“Do not ever sass the cook, or you might get something unexpected in your food.”

“Yeah, okay, I think I’m just gonna order a pizza.”

Dean turned, and pointed at the chairs in front of the breakfast bar. “Sit down, shut the fuck up, and eat what I tell you to. You’ll like it, I promise. Just enough with the back talk.”

Sam sighed. “Sure thing, Dad.” 

Dean gave him the middle finger over his shoulder, and Sam laughed. He thought about it a bit, and said, “If we find any other crazy angels, we help them or we put ‘em down. That’s what we do.”

“Do you ever wish we didn’t?”

“All the fucking time,” Dean admitted. But he supposed he had to remind himself that they did some good in the world, and they didn’t find themselves drawn and quartered every time. Although once was more than enough. 

Still, because of them, Nathanael wasn’t killing any more people, and Nevaeh and Esther weren’t stuck in a cult. Even if that was all they ever did, it was more than worth it.

 

 

 

The End


End file.
